Well, after looking through 35 pages of basking area photos and talking to some folks, I decided to go with the simplest, easiest, yet elegant solution - cork bark. I got a piece of Zoo-Med's Jumbo product - labeled CF-J, and crossed my fingers that it would be wide enough to fit the 17.5" internal glass to glass size I have in this 75 gallon tank (which is a standard 48"x 18" tank as measured from the outside.
I didn't want to immediately have to deal with building acrylic walls - and (hats off to you) some of the very complex designs you folks beautifully built - I just wanted to get as much water/swimming space cleared as possible (there was this Reptology Large Turtle Pier that had posts taking up a LOT of swimming space - I'd say it blocked 1/3 of the tank in many ways).
I wrote to Zoo-Med, and they refuse to give dimensions for their various 'models' of this cork bark - even though they do have several 'models' that imply dimensions, like 'small,' medium,' 'large,' 'extra-large,' and 'Jumbo.' When I questioned them about this they were a bit dumbfounded and said that they couldn't give dimensions aside from weight (which as of the time of my 'conversation' with them their page also did NOT display) - so I guess nobody ever questioned them about what was inherently problematic with their entire approach. I think it's bull shrog that they can't give dimensions frankly - at least approximate - plenty of other items in the world give approx. dimensions and I'm sure that if they wanted to - when they tagged these at whatever factory, they could give rough dimensions to each size category. It really made me very,very annoyed at them. Esp. because the Amazon (and other re-sellers) were clearly confused by their entire marketing of cork bark - most of the time the item image did not match the written description (as in the Amazon ad) - and the Amazon re-seller DID give dimensions of 24" x 24" x 5" - and I'd say that I have NO IDEA where they got these dimensions which were half reality and half fantasy and even if there WERE correct what does a 24" x 24" x 5" piece of cork bark look like anyway that shows a PHOTO of one of Zoo-Med's ROUND models (not the flat that the written description talks about). That would be a HUGELY thick 24"x 24" piece of rounded cork bark wouldn't it?
So- - in the end it was, IMHO, more luck than anything that it worked out with the Zoo-Med piece (it had been recommended to me to go to nurseries to find this material - and I was lazy (well - I'm not lazy but in this regard I was willing to give the Web a try first)). Meanwhile, it seemed to have a natural ramp cut across half of the length that was perfect - probably Zoo-Med either 'picked' it well or cut it that way although it wasn't sawed - so maybe broke it that way - no idea really.
It took a while and a number of cuts for me (being geometrically challenged a bit
) to get it to fit without breaking it - and I saved the extras as 'wedge' pieces as you can see in the photos because while it would work fine even floating up and down with the water level (WHICH I PROMISE I WILL RAISE WHEN i CAN FIGURE OUT CONTAINMENT) I thought the wedge pieces were good for really stabilizing it.
It's about 1.5" -2" thick pretty uniformly (where is that 5"
)
The only picture I neglected to take - like a dummy - is one from directly above. But it's a nice big platform for her - and I could easily add to it by ordering another large piece if for some reason it seemed good for her in the long run...???
So she climbed on it - no exaggeration - within one minute of me putting it in there and actually I left her and she was SLEEPING on it later that night as if she really just loved it and didn't want to sleep in the water as usual (don't worry - the ramp is a big, wide, not steep thing and EASY for her so that's not it.
Here are some images, albeit not that great.
does that makes sense? i was a litttle worried about the strength of the silicon but after 48 hours i could pick the whole thing up by the tile, so i'm not too concerned. the only other thing i added was a strip of terarium liner to cover the non-ramp part of the plexi. it kinda looks like a welcome mat for the ATBA.